“Succession” feels real while steering clear of the real world. There’s no pandemic, no January 6 insurrection, no Trump — just a weak-kneed conservative in the Oval Office nicknamed “the raisin.”
But “Succession” captures Fox News’ business model in a way journalism can’t. It shows why right-wing media are addicted to extremism, how they churn out hatemongers, and why they have to brazenly lie. The truth in fiction is more relevant than ever with Fox News’s $787.5 million settlement for knowingly peddling falsehoods about the 2020 election and the firing of Tucker Carlson, its top-ranked demagogue.
The theme of the show is that as Logan Roy dangles the reins of power before his conniving damaged children, he is also running scared that his faltering empire will be swallowed up by a social-media juggernaut and reduced to an app in their digital store.
Like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, Logan and ATN go to extremes for ratings because more viewers mean more eyeballs, advertisers, dollars, and the wealth and political power that is their lifeblood. But in chasing ratings Logan and company are a Dr. Frankenstein. Their monster is rampaging through the countryside, but they cling to it in a desperate bid to stay profitable and powerful.
One such ogre is Mark Ravenhead. Part Madison Cawthorn, part Nick Fuentes, he’s an ATN talking head who reads Mein Kampf, was married in Hitler’s Eagle Nest stronghold, and named his dog after the Führer’s dog, Blondi, but with a “different spelling.”
The libs and Antifa are all riled up, but “he’s a big draw,” one of ATN’s most popular anchors, “and his demo skews younger.” With no smoking swastika brand to be found on Ravenhead’s forehead, Logan decrees, “we back talent. Ravenhead stays.”
Another character, more Tucker-like, shows how “Succession” brilliantly captures the poisonous realm of politics, money and extremism where Fox News resides.
With a presidential election heating up, Logan attends the Future Freedom Summit, a beauty pageant for right-wing candidates. The men who would be president strut and preen for Logan’s attention because the winner will receive the attention of ATN.
After waving off a gray party stalwart and a dry Hispanic reactionary as unappealing, Logan dispatches his youngest son, the deliciously deviant Roman, to do a minuet with aspirant Jeryd Mencken.
Mencken is a “YouTube provocateur” who declares “rape is natural. It's all red pill, baby,” and a scientific racist, “people trust people who look like them. That’s just a scientific fact.” For Mencken, ATN is dead. “A pudding cup at 5:00 p.m. in the nursing home.” (He’s also scorned as an “Aristo-populist,” just like Tucker.)
Mencken may be a bridge too far for the Roys. “Fascists are kind of cool. But not really,” says Roman. But because “the base does like him” that is enough to court him.
Roman says, “I get it. You're f------ 6G and we're Betamax. But, you know, you need us. I think. Our news, our viewers, those almost-deads. That's a big slice of pie.”
ATN is the dowry for a marriage of convenience with Mencken. Roman says his plans for ATN include “TikTok psychos” and “E-girls with f---ing guns and Juul pods.” “No more pillows and bedpans. We’re strictly bone broth and d--- pills. Deep-state conspiracy hour, but with, like, a f------ wink … And the whole show is kinda set up for the star: President Jeryd Mencken.”
Having won Mencken’s hand, Roman seeks Logan’s blessing. “This guy is box office. He’s f*cking diesel. He’s good on camera. He’s fun. He’ll fight. Viewers will eat from his hand.”
But an alliance is not just for kicks. Roman says, “If we don’t come to an accommodation, we get outflanked, and we lose the ATN dollar machine when we need cash to fight tech.”
Logan bestows approval with a smirk and a barb. The sequence is a perfect distillation of how Fox News operates. “Succession” has cracked the code for why right-wing media are driven to feed off lies and demagoguery.
What sells matters more than what is said. If you don’t stay relevant, you get ejected from the whirly-derby of viewers, advertisers, dollars and power. In the social-media age where outrage and controversy are the content, extremism is not just to be tolerated it is to be embraced like a lifevest.
That dynamic explains why the Murdochs backed Tucker as he turned his prime-time show into the “White Nationalist Power Hour.” His outrages made him stronger, saying immigrants made America “poorer and dirtier,” calling Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys,” echoing the Proud Boy creed that “white men” were responsible for “creating civilization,” spewing misogyny, covid denialism, election falsehoods, the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “false flag.” Even bellowing the neo-Nazi “great replacement theory” — that there is a secret plot by elites to replace whites with dark-skinned immigrants — in more than 400 episodes was enough to get him canned.
The far-right provocateurs on “Succession,” who borrow ideas from anyone including “Franco or H or Travis Bickle,” may seem like hyperbole. “H,” says Roman eyebrows raised, “There was a very naughty boy named ‘H.’”
But consider that Tucker trumpeted the incendiary “white genocide” conspiracy, a lie that white South African farmers are being wiped out by savage Blacks. According to the New York Times, a senior Fox executive told other network executives that pretty much everything Carlson said was false and his “coverage had been ripped from far-right sites, including the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.”
Unlike Murdoch, the Roys have a few misgivings about consorting with fascists. Nonetheless, Logan would have protected Tucker like he did Mencken and Ravenhead — because he brought home the bacon. Despite a widespread advertiser boycott of his show, ad dollars increased as his audience grew. Plus Fox used Tucker’s show to boost the rest of its news channel and revenue.
Tucker was not done in by text messages that came to light in the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems claiming defamation by Fox News for its lies about a rigged election. Carlson knew that Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell were lying about 2020 election fraud, but nonetheless he repeatedly went on air to push lies he knew were lies. He led the pack of Fox News personalities who ridiculed in private lies they promoted nightly.
What did in Tucker was text messages in which he bit the hand that fed him. He blasted Fox News for correctly projecting that Biden won Arizona, saying, “Those f---ers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” And he lambasted executives in another message for costing “trust and credibility … with our audience.”
The messages from Tucker, other provocateurs like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and a slew of executives including Rupert Murdoch reveal ATN-worthy business ethics. They were panicking that viewers "abandoned Fox in droves” after the Arizona call.
Fox executives fretted about bleeding viewers to even Trumpier news channels like Newsmax that surged after the 2020 election. One exec said Fox viewers felt “betrayed.”
Another executive said of the fringe news channels, “They are just whacking us.”
Like Logan Roy, Murdoch’s primary concern was the bottom line. Murdoch bemoaned being the first network to call Arizona for Biden, emailing his son and successor, Lachlan, “but at least being second saves us a Trump explosion.” Ten days after the election, Rupert was nervous a growing Newsmax would attract financing to transform it into a genuine rival. According to the Wall Street Journal, he wrote to the Fox News CEO, “Everything at stake here,” and warning “against antagonizing Mr. Trump.”
On-air, of course, Fox News was hyping election fraud stories around the clock: suitcases full of secret ballots; Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, fixed the election; Dominion software shaved votes from Trump and added them to Biden; Dominion voting machines could be hacked; 35,000 votes illegally cast in Georgia; George Soros stole the election, and many more.
The end result was the insurrection. Murdoch admitted it while erasing his role in instigating the first-ever coup attempt on the U.S. Capitol. “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25 percent of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitably it blew up Jan. 6th.”
Tucker is gone, joining other departed Fox hate meisters who seemed too big to fail: Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes. Fox is out nearly a billion dollars with other lawsuits in the works with even larger potential payouts. U.S. politics are broken with a hollow centrist party formally in power but too cowardly to do anything bold.
Fox News marches on. There will be new demagogues. There will be new groups to demonize. Its business model — ATN’s business model — of harnessing extremism for power and profit remains intact.
Logan Roy would be smiling wherever he is.
Arun Gupta is a journalist who has written for the Washington Post, The Nation, Raw Story, The Guardian, and Jacobin. He is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York and author of the upcoming “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: A Junk Food-Loving Chef’s Inquiry Into Taste” (The New Press).
